Dax couldn’t get enough of Angel. It wasn’t just her body, it was her spirit, the way she laughed and the way she knew exactly when to be serious. Something about her both tamed and excited the beast in him, and frightened him all at the same time. She was looking down at him and smiling, and the look in her eyes was more than the desire that he usually saw in the eyes of the women he fucked. With Angel, it was more than that, and it was terrifying, but he was already addicted and in no mood to kick the habit.

She closed her eyes again and he kissed her. She put her hands on either side of his face and braced herself as she kissed him back. The intensity of a simple kiss with her shook him to his very core and caused every inch of him to tingle with a kind of life he hadn’t known even existed before. His cock was throbbing already and he loved the way she wiggled her hips down against him. Her body almost hummed aloud with anticipation, and he could feel it. While they kissed, he began running his hands slowly over her voluptuous body, touching every inch that he could reach, letting the memory of every curve burn into his memory and ruining every encounter with any woman that would come after her.

He unhooked her bra and let her firm, round breasts go free. Reaching between them he began to massage and squeeze them. He loved how they felt in his hands and the way her big, dark nipples pressed hard into his palms. He sunk his big fingers into her supple flesh, squeezing harder and letting his thumbs rake across the nipples. He loved the way she moaned into his mouth. The taste of his name on her breath was sweet and the way she was grinding into him…so fucking sexy. He broke their kiss and pulled her up so that those gorgeous tits were in his face. She straddled him and he began to lick and suck at her breasts. She put her hands on the sides of them and pushed them together so that he could go back and forth quickly from one nipple to the other. He loved how responsive she was. She was so fucking sexy.

He began pushing her upwards slowly as he let his tongue trace a path down the center of her chest and down the middle of her belly. When he got to her belly button he tickled it with his tongue, holding her tightly so that she couldn’t squirm away. He tore at the button on her jeans at the same time with the other hand until her hands came down and helped him get them unbuttoned. In a hoarse, raspy voice he said, “Take them off.” She quickly stood and pulled them and her little panties off, and he delighted at the sight of her moist, pink pussy glistening in what was left of the sunlight. He pulled her back down, positioning that sweet pussy over his lips and then he dove in, licking and sucking and nibbling like a starving man…like a wild animal. Something about her brought out every primal instinct in him. He sucked her swollen clit in between his lips and then he used the side of his teeth to scrape it and elicit sexy cries from deep down in her chest. He loved the way she shook as they rumbled out.

She was crying out his name as he continued to drive her crazy with his lips and tongue, and he felt her body stiffen just before he tasted the sweetness of orgasm that tore through her body. She started shaking all over and collapsed in a heap of gasps and pants. He let her rest for a second before flipping her over and placing himself between her legs. He leaned down and kissed her. He loved the way she sucked and licked eagerly at his mouth and tongue, tasting herself. It was like she loved the taste of herself on his lips as much as he did.

He finally pushed up off her, reluctantly. She watched him with her big green eyes as he stripped off his clothes. He was used to women looking at him with lust in their eyes. But that little something extra that he saw in Angel’s eyes threatened to drive him crazy at times. Once he was as naked as she was, he knelt and took her ankles in his hands. She looked surprised as he brought one leg up to his mouth and kissed up from the ankle to the back of her knee. He put that leg down and did the same with the other and then he pushed her legs open and settled himself down in between them.

He reached down between them and used his fingertips to stroke her pussy lips, loving the way that she shuddered as he did. After a few strokes, he let his index finger toy with the fleshy folds of that sweet pussy and then he began to push one up inside of her. The soft, velvety walls closed around his finger and he began to push it in and out of her, loving the sounds that it made as his finger stroked against her wet walls. She pushed her hips up off the ground and moved them up and down as he finger-fucked her. Her moans were getting louder and she was digging her fingers into his shoulders as she whimpered and writhed underneath him.

He pulled his fingers out and brought them to his lips. She made eye contact with him as he licked them, and then he shifted his hips so that his cock was lined up with her opening and he pushed up inside of her. Her fingers pushed harder into the flesh of his shoulders and her hips came up higher to meet his. He leaned down and kissed her as her pussy opened to him, wrapping his cock up like a custom-made sheath. He moved in and out of her with rhythmic strokes and he wished at that moment that there was nothing more than this…that this one moment could define his whole life.

It didn’t take long before he was dangling on the edge of no return. All it took was for her to scream out his name as she came for the second time and the feel of her pussy clamping down around his throbbing cock like a vise, and he was finished. He came hard, using every ounce of energy he possessed at that moment…and when he was finally empty he rolled his body over so that he was next to her on the blanket and he wrapped her up in his arms. She fit so well. She fit everything in his life. It was like she was the piece of his puzzle that had been missing all along…and he intended to keep her. He was going to cement her into that space that had been empty for so long and he was never going to let her go.

* * *

Angel rushed into the meeting that she had called, late and clutching the venti coffee she’d just bought at Starbucks tightly in her right hand. The men were already all there, and she stopped as she passed her father and kissed him on the cheek.

“Hi, beautiful. How are you?”

“Late,” Kyle said. Angel rolled her eyes at her brother and then smiled at her dad.

“I’m good,” she said. “How are you?”

“I miss my girl.”

“I walked for five miles yesterday,” Sheriff Zandt said. Angel looked at him questioningly. “I took Kyle’s shift. I followed you two up into the forest as far as I could take the van and then I parked it and walked the rest of the way up. I found the bike, but not the two of you. I followed the trail, but never saw you. It wasn’t until I was coming back down that I spotted you walking a few hundred yards ahead of me.” Angel’s stomach fluttered. Thank God he didn’t stumble up on them naked in that meadow. She shivered at the thought of that. It was beautiful, and she wished that she was still there instead of in this room with a bunch of men that were suspicious of her intentions. Her father was the only one she excepted from that thought.

“He was showing me a meadow,” she said. She looked at her dad and said, “I saw a whitetail.” Her dad smiled. She thought she saw Micah make a face, and Kyle grunted. She ignored them and took her seat at the table. “So,” she said after taking a sip of her coffee. “I have a rendezvous point for you.”

That got their attention, all of them. They even sat up straighter. “Still on Friday?” Kyle asked.

“Yes. This Dan called back and I heard Dax ask him something about meeting up at a funeral home. Then Dan apparently told him no about that and instead they’re going to meet at Culberson and Main near the old Baptist cemetery.”

“Funeral home? Cemetery?” her father mused aloud. Looking over at Micah he said, “When the heist happened, did they have any clue at all who had taken the platinum?”

“I spoke with the FBI agent in charge of that investigation, a Special Agent Briggs. According to him their number one suspect was the son-in-law of Bob Godin, the collector that was robbed. The son-in-law’s name is Vincent Miller and he and the daughter have since gotten a divorce. Godin had a stroke a couple years ago and the daughter is the caregiver. She was Miller’s alibi for the day of the heist, so after the divorce Special Agent Briggs interviewed her again and she admitted that she ‘may have’ been mistaken and Miller ‘may not have’ been with her the entire day. But she wouldn’t admit that she lied outright and she wouldn’t say anything more about it—nothing that gave him any new leads to follow. Miller has been at the same job and in the same house that he moved into after the divorce. His financial accounts are still being watched and there hasn’t been any unusual activity.”

“Has anyone close to him died recently?” Kyle asked.

“That didn’t come up, but it would be easy enough to find out,” Micah said.

“What does he do for a living?” Sheriff Zandt asked.

“He’s a limo driver. He drives for a company out of Mystic.”

Angel’s dad had a thoughtful look on his face as he said, “I wonder if they do funerals.”

Kyle already had his phone out and Micah was giving him the name of the limousine company. For a few seconds, Angel was able to put all the stress and conflict aside for a few minutes and once again enjoy the thrill of police work. For the next hour, the team worked to get as much information on Vince Miller as they could, and when it turned out that the company he worked for had not only been contracted for a lot of funerals but specifically for one at the Baptist cemetery the following day, they celebrated. They were about to break open a case that the FBI had been stumped on for the past five years. It felt good, and when Micah grabbed Angel up in a hug, for a second she forgot that she’d already checked out of their relationship emotionally.

He hugged her tightly and said, “You’re amazing! This is it, baby. We can kill two birds with one stone. We can break this cold case and we can arrest the Skulls for transporting stolen property. Depending on which way they go, we can get them on transporting it across state lines. I’ll be willing to bet they’ll also have a lot of heavy firepower on them, so they’ll have gun charges and parole violation charges…and if their president is in the midst of all of that, I doubt the club will be able to survive with him and half of their men locked up. You did it, babe. You should be so proud of yourself.”

Angel forced a smile. “I am,” she said. “I’m proud of all of us.” She took a step back and Micah’s hands fell from her waist. “I should get going…”

“Going? Where?”

“Back to work,” she said. “Friday is two days away. I should be around, in case anything changes.”

“Good idea,” Kyle said. He was sitting behind Angel and had his phone to his ear. “Angel, you get back to work and call us with anything new. Micah, we’re going to set up surveillance on Vince Miller. Zandt and Dad, can you two see about talking to Miller’s ex again? It would be nice to have some idea of where he’s planning on moving this stuff so that we can have backup set up along the way. I’ve got a feeling that Dax Marshall and his boys won’t go down without a fight. I want to have as much firepower on our side as they do when we take them down.”

Angel suppressed a shudder. She went over and kissed her father on the cheek again and stopped to give Micah one as well. Micah had gone from warm and pliable back to stiff and cold again that quickly. “We’ll talk later, okay?” she told him. He nodded, but he had a vacant look in his eyes like he’d already checked out. She knew he was putting up walls to protect his heart, and she hated knowing that was her fault. She left him standing there, staring at the wall in front of him, and she hurried out to her car. She had a lot of work to do. Somehow she had to find a way for this sting to work without Dax and his crew being taken down in the middle of it. She knew it might be hard to live with the consequences of that, but the idea of Dax’s being shot or killed or imprisoned trumped that.